Freefall
by Inkfire
Summary: He can't really tell what freedom is. He doesn't care. It isn't up to him anymore. A one-shot for the third competition on the Hogwarts Online forum.


**A one-shot for the 3rd competition on the Hogwarts Online Forum. **

_**Theme: Prison Break**__  
__**Prompts: "There are demons inside and outside these walls...", Shadows, Dancing lights, Blood Curdling howl.  
**__**You must use all the prompts, and stick to the theme.**__**  
Word count - 400-1000 words.**_

"_Cold._"

Shudders run along his spine as he lies on the hard, icy floor of his cell. In the corridor hover Dementors, hungry for his weakness, for the feeling of death looming over him.

"Hungry – demons," he pants, muttering under his breath. "Demons, there are demons. Inside – and outside these walls."

Today _he_ is the prey, that's all.

"I lived once!" he suddenly shrieks, rebelling against the crawling feelings of fear and helplessness threatening to take over.

He almost, _almost_ stands before falling to his knees again – an eternal rise and fall just like his hushed whispers pitching into screams, like his maddened, irregular heartbeat.

He has fallen hard and fast, but he never seems to hit the ground.

(_it never stops nevernevernever stops_)

"I...was a hunter once," he breathes, and hugs himself tight, rocking back and forth like an oversized, pitiful and famished child.

He's going to be freed, freed of the pain and coldness and despair, but they won't have stolen his beliefs.

(_only the strength to fight for them_)

The door opens, and in strides a ghost of his past.

Slowly, ever so slowly he raises his head, staring into the eyes of – _another_ – monster. He stares into those hatred-filled eyes for a long, long while, and then a low whine distracts him.

His heart jumps and beats a bit more quickly, erratically, because _God_ his mother is here and _God_ he thought he would never see her face again – that loving face he surrendered in the name of his ideals, that very same face, now pale and sunken, frightened and shining like a martyr of motherhood, just a shadow of a person he once _deluded-let down-betrayed. _He stares at her,drinking into her, because at that very moment they're so alike.

And he doesn't know, he doesn't know yet that there's an awful sense of irony in this fleeting thought, his mind is fogged, the world is blurred and he doesn't quite remember what the hell sanity ever felt like.

His father approaches him, never letting go of his wife – how he clutches her skinny arm, it must be so painful and yet it's just as if he were holding her up – and then hauls him off the floor, squeezing hard with disgust and rage basically seeping from his icy hand onto his son's gaunt frame. He holds him at a safe distance, his mouth contorting ever so slightly under his perfect little mustache, and it's just so bloody ludicrous that this man is his flesh and blood and name and origin and could have been his everything, that _Barty fucking Crouch Junior _explodes in mad laughter, doubling over like the messed-up madman he is, his hilarity a blood-curdling howl that would make anyone's skin crawl. And he _laughslaughslaughs_ like Bella laughed at the Longbottoms', he laughs until his throat hurts like hell and there are sobs wrecking through his frame, and then he collapses.

For a second it looks like his father is going to snap, like all the carefully built façades are coming undone, but it's just one _moment_ and Barty doesn't even see it, because the whole world is made of shadows and everything that's real is going on within his crazed little head. He is on the floor now, broken and silent at least, but his father steps forward and hauls him up again, and won't let him die.

(_not that he would mind himself_)

(_not that he wouldn't prefer_)

And it _hurtshurtshurts_ and he's lost control, so Barty closes his eyes oh so tightly, and all he sees is dancing lights as his body changes and he is pulled out of darkness. This isn't a prison break and this isn't a taste of freedom, but he can't tell what it is anyhow.

(_he lost it, can't you see?_)


End file.
